Joel James Davis

In the middle of summer, when it’s too hot for cargo shorts and the air is heavy to breathe, I let my mouth slide open into a slippery smirk, as I watch Michael Ritter, the boy you loved in 5th grade, on the local news.

He fell to his knees laughing. His friends snickered at you: Dear Michael, I really, really like you… They whispered when you walked by. You cried yourself to sleep at night, a salty puddle of pre-adolescent pain staining your Barbie doll pillow case.

It’s not until I see him on the news, until I want to tell you how much you didn’t miss out on, how lucky you are that he never loved you. It’s not until then that I start to miss you.

It’s almost been a year since last summer when your mother drove you off an Arizona overpass. Your car tumbled onto the shiny alloy of train tracks pulled tight against dirt and gravel like braces. You were dead before a train slammed into your car twisting metal and bones.

I like to imagine you asleep in the passenger seat. The overpass a cliff, the desert orange rock of a winding road. Maybe your mom falls asleep at the wheel; she’s been driving for too long. Maybe she swerves to miss an animal, a rock. Maybe she cuts a turn to sharply and loses control.

I like to imagine it innocent. That it’s nobody’s fault.

The car falls down the cliff breaking through a mile of air, but it only takes a second to slam into the ground, not long enough for you to wake up. Not long enough for you to know what happens next.

_______________________________Yinka Rose Reed-Nolan is currently a PhD student at Binghamton University. She earned her BA in Liberal Arts from Goddard College and MFA in creative writing from California State University Fresno. She has worked as an Editorial Assistant for The Normal School: A Literary Magazine and The Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. Her work has been featured in The Hoot and Hare Review, The Dying Goose, Niche, and Bloom. When she’s not writing she enjoys baseball, road trips and team trivia.

The city hums traffic through lights, blinking
eyes right before sleep, a flatline pattern,
automated efficiency designed
to pull cars through midnight into dawn.
I fall inside, privy to dulled movement,
beer foaming to a quiet stasis, smoke
veiling the bartender and patrons.
Smells of gin, sweat, amyl, tool and product
of lifestyle manufacture, the market
for primacy, the dank and dark of cave
signifying spaces where men belong
to men, belie the confidence of pose,
migraine smiles suggesting satisfaction.

Don, the shirtless bartender, jovial
and smirking at me, dangerously out
of place, nudges me with jokes and beer
into talking, a thaw that draws other
moths to the light of the HD big screen
porno flashing raw tension behind my stool.
Maladroit, I can’t navigate a way
between communion and commodity,
a simple new guy that laughs politely,
declines shots, thank you, declines dance, thank you,
out of place in the sanguine atmosphere
of easy sex in public, among friends.
They offer me beer, friendship, a blowjob.

In this space constructed by and for men to pose, to pretend like
the word faggot doesn’t exist, a highly studied safe zone,
rules sit simple: pleasure transcends the body’s
politics and the cattle grind of out there. To cum is to arrive.

___________________________________________Airek Beauchamp is attending Binghamton University where he is working on his PhD in English, studying writing pedagogy and sound. He is a Binghamton resident, although he really hates winter.

This is when ponies
were dark violet and a
sack of carrots was all we needed
to survive in the golden desert.
Brother and sister: what a fearless
team to behold.
We’d set toward the sun
as it dropped in the West,
and knew we’d reach Oklahoma
by dawn.
Your too­small blue cowboy boots made you limp
but you didn’t complain.
While my roomy red ones heroically dug craters
with my pointed plastic heels.
The spurs we never owned
flashed and made metal chinks
as we strode across the sands.
I wiped my brow with a gloved hand,
while silently you mimicked me.

Plastic muskets on our backs,
we always knew when danger would arrive,
and when it did we fought like ninjas
twisting and kicking the threatening dust.
The cowboys of our backyard,
we kept the neighborhood secure,
even though we were no more than 7 and 9.
I always gave myself more credit,
it made sense. I was older.
You’d go first into the darkness,
and I’d bask in the glory of cowardice.
I’ll always wish I didn’t sacrifice you
so many times during play.
That made it too easy when I started playing
real life. I would apologize, but it is horrific
how much child is extracted from me each year.

_____________________________________KM Armstrong has a Master’s degree in English from Binghamton University, where she studied creative non­fiction and theory. She lives in Binghamton and works in law enforcement.

every morning the machine hands us a hiccuped torch.
recycled failures of the week, the year, the decade before.
cc’d emails collect a swollen desk. an asbestos-lined ceiling
fan stains a memory of the time when a senator, a congresswoman,
and a community member vowed to fight this Brooklyn machine
with the rigor of a Long Island PTA mother. but I am on the front-lines.
every morning i look for answers in their epic eye gazing, repetitive self-injuries,
and empty vocalizations.

____________________________________Jessica Abel is a Speech Therapist based in Brooklyn, NY. She earned her B.S. in English Literature from S.U.N.Y Binghamton and M.S. in Speech-Language Pathology from New York Medical College. She is currently pursuing her M.S. in School Leadership. She is a lover of adolescent literature and music (think Judy Blume and Lorde).